I found most success with a party setup of a Leper (tank), Highwayman (mix of ranged/melee), Arbalest (ranged) and a Vestal (cleric/healer). The starting skills and stats of your characters are randomly generated so sometimes it’s actually best to send a group to their deaths if they don’t fit your requirements, as callous as that sounds. Taken alongside the investments required for your characters, the game requires a cool-headed strategic approach even before you descend to the dungeons that represent the real body of the game.Īlongside the usual mix of fighters, mages and rogues, Darkest Dungeon contains a number of unusual character types. Various establishments, from the aforementioned bar and abbey to the blacksmith and the stagecoach on which your fated volunteers arrive can be upgraded and improved. It is also possible to change your character names, but given their life expectancies, not advisable.Īs well as developing your heroes, you are directly responsible for the upkeep of the hamlet in which you are based.
All of these cost money, however, and at the beginning of the game the main difficulty comes from earning enough to keep your party alive and healthy. Rest and relaxation in the game can take place in the bar, gambling house, brothel, or through various acts of devotion in the abbey. After the first few disasters, it becomes apparent that the best strategy is to have several different parties set up to alternate between, as the stresses of dungeon exploration necessitate resting your heroes between sorties. The balance to be struck, therefore, is between ensuring that your characters are levelled up through experience and spending gold on their skills and equipment without over-investing and losing it all due to a doomed dungeon run. As with the hugely popular Souls series, you learn and progress through dying, so it pays not to get too attached to any of your team members. The backstory is similar to many other RPGs, but the key difference here is how disposable your characters are. It is your duty to recruit and guide a party of unlikely heroes to explore around and beneath the mansion to uncover and eradicate the horrors that were released. It plays like a well-designed board game, with all the calculations and random numbers happening in the background.Īs the game begins, you are approaching the house of your deceased uncle, aware that he died in mysterious circumstances having dabbled in occult experiments.
It features a similar mechanic of madness manifesting itself directly, albeit with the effects remaining more clearly within the game world.
The Cthulhu mythos has been well represented in gaming, but Darkest Dungeon is surely the finest use of such influences since Eternal Darkness on the Gamecube. The game itself has a wonderful Lovecraftian aesthetic, complete with tentacled monsters and the constant threat of indescribable horrors.
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